


unfamiliar etiquette

by aetherae



Series: yuri/estelle week 2018 [2]
Category: Tales of Vesperia
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Humor, Post-Canon, but y'know i'm throwing it out there anyways, i'm not even sure if this is really yuri/estelle still, this is really silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-19
Updated: 2018-09-19
Packaged: 2019-07-14 08:42:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16036931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aetherae/pseuds/aetherae
Summary: Leave it to Yuri to find a way around the rules.





	unfamiliar etiquette

**Author's Note:**

> I'M A DAY LATE AND I DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT THIS WHAT WAS THE POINT!!! tbh i actually had most of this done last night and then thought "eh there's no need to rush i have plenty of time tomorrow to finish it." cue me getting home and passing out so hard when i woke up it was the next day. alas................
> 
> this is honestly so silly and i feel like i really lost the point of this being shippy but. well, like i said in the tags, here it is anyways. I HOPE YOU ENJOY.... SOMEHOW.

> **day 3 - high-five/handshake**

Estelle is not jealous.

It would be a silly thing to be jealous over, for one. No one gets jealous over something like a secret _handshake_ of all things, and she’s better than that. She’s more mature than that. Estelle is a princess of the empire, a trained knight in all but name, can weave her way out of a political dispute just as easily as she fights her way out of a battle. Getting jealous over a secret handshake would be childish, and she is _not_ a child, thank you very much.

But the secret handshake Karol came up with for all the members of Brave Vesperia looks so _cool_ , so _fun_ , and Estelle might be just the tiniest bit jealous.

She knows she could ask him, or Judith, or Yuri about the handshake, and they’d teach it to her with no qualms. Judith just finds it fun to teach it to anyone she can, but Karol and Yuri have always had a softspot for her requests, and that’s the problem to begin with. Even if she visits so often she might as well be a semi-permanent fixture to the Brave Vesperia headquarters, she’s not a member of the guild. She never will be, and as much as it pangs her heart to know she can’t always go on adventures with them, Estelle’s long since accepted it. Being a princess might not have ever been the most important thing to her, but she wants to help everyone she can. Not being a citizen of the empire means not being able to sit in on policy meetings with Ioder and the Council, and as much as she prefers being able to affect change directly, immediately, she knows that those stuffy rooms and boring meetings are where some of the most help is made. She’s too selfish not to help everyone she can.

It wouldn’t be fair to make them bend the rules for her again, not when they’re all working so hard to make the guild as big a success as possible. Things might be different for the guilds, but Estelle knows decorum when she sees it. There are rules for a reason, and respect for them can make or break a guild when they’re just starting out.

Maybe she wouldn’t be jealous if she could make a secret handshake of her own, but it never works out. Rita’s hardly interested, and not even their friendship could get the mage invested enough to sit down and memorize a long, complicated handshake when she could be memorizing long, complicated mana formulas instead. Raven would be fine if he didn’t insist on throwing in something new every time—an extra spin, another wave of the hands, a silly face at the end. It’s less a secret handshake and more a constantly evolving dance. With Flynn, she’s yet to think of a routine that would render his armor comfortable and not potentially bruise-inducing, and Ioder—frankly, she just can’t picture it. She’s even thought about asking the Spirits, but they don’t even all have limbs.

So she sets her head down on her writing desk with a sigh, pouting like a child even with Halure’s tree blooming so prettily outside her window. Normally it’s enough to make her smile no matter how many times she’s seen it, but not today. Instead she grumbles into her desk, “I want a secret handshake, too.”

For his part, Yuri simply raises an eyebrow. “Y’know I could just teach you the guild’s, right?”

“I’m not a member of Brave Vesperia,” she says as she sits up, shaking her head before Yuri can try to rebuke her. “Even if its founding members are fine with it, it’s not fair to the new members if you always bend the rules for me. Karol’s trying to set an example for them.”

“I think you’re the only one who cares so much about that.” He rolls his eyes and shakes his head, and she thinks he’ll just leave it at that until, “Why don’t we just make our own then?”

She blinks.

“But you already have a secret handshake.”

He shrugs easily, but he smiles all the same, warm and teasing.  “Since when could a person only have one secret handshake? There some book on handshake protocol I don’t know about?”

Estelle opens her mouth, only for nothing to come out because, well. He has a point there, doesn’t he? Maybe it’s silly of her to be taking this all so seriously in the first place, but she thinks she has a bit of room for excuse when things like these are about as far away from familiar as possible for her. She feels her cheeks flush, but Yuri simply holds his hand out for her to take.

“Okay, but I’m warning you,” she says with a laugh, reaching for his hand and finding it warm beneath her own, “I have some pretty complicated routines in mind.”

His smile widens. “Do your worst.”

Maybe Estelle won’t have a secret handshake with everyone, but she’s plenty happy having one with Yuri.


End file.
